Pius X died on 21 August 1914. Though advanced in years, and plagued by gout, he had not suffered from conspicuously bad health in recent times. The medical diagnosis was pneumonia, a common enough cause of death among old people in those days. But pious contemporaries, and some historians and biographers, have claimed that it was a broken heart, broken by the outbreak of the terrible war which he had repeatedly predicted – il guerrone.1 Others have claimed that he and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry Del Val, helped precipitate the war by badly advising Franz Josef that Austria was in the right and should humble Serbia.2 A little later, Merry Del Val rebutted these claims:
It is true that after the atrocious crime of Sarajevo I told Count Palffy [Secretary to the Austrian Legation to the Holy See] that Austria should stand firm, that she had every right to substantial reparations, and the right to safeguard her existence, but I never expressed the hope or opinion that Austria should have recourse to arms. I never said anything else.3
While this certainly suggests that he had not encouraged Austrian bellicosity, it does not suggest either that he realized the full gravity of the situation or that he tried very hard to prevent the outbreak of a war. If one is to attribute any blame at all to the Holy See for the outbreak of war then it would be for its lack of information about the international situation and its inadequate efforts to ameliorate it.4 In fact, Pius X and Merry Del Val had little in the way of diplomatic leverage with which to play a peacemaking role in the summer of 1914. Not only did Pius X’s death leave the Church leaderless at a very difficult time and in a condition of internal division as a result of the struggles over ‘Modernism’, it also left it in a situation of external isolation as well. Following the rupture with France, the Holy See enjoyed relations with only three major powers – Austria, Prussia and Russia – two or three minor Catholic powers in Europe – Spain, Belgium and Bavaria – and a clutch of South American republics. Not since the death of Pius IX in 1878 had the Catholic Church possessed so little influence on the international scene as in August 1914.5
This was the situation in which the Vatican found itself when the college of cardinals met in conclave to elect Pius X’s successor in September 1914. Furthermore, as Alberto Monticone has pointed out, the First World War was a battle between two ‘opposing cultures, economies, politico-social models on the basis of which the decisive armed confrontation had been prepared for years’.6 As became clear in the conclave, these conflicts in the secular world could not be prevented from affecting the Church as well. A leading Catholic journalist of the time, Ernesto Vercesi, described in his memoirs the meeting in the Vatican of the Belgian Cardinal Mercier of Malines and the German Cardinal Hartmann of Cologne: ‘I hope,’ said Hartmann, ‘that we shall not speak of war.’ ‘And I hope that we shall not speak of peace,’ came back the sharp reply.7 More serious than this anecdotal evidence is the fact that as the conclave opened, German Catholics, inspired no doubt by their government, presented a declaration to the cardinal electors (ironically written in French), justifying their government’s decision to go to war.8 Inevitably, French-Belgian Catholics felt obliged to send a counter-message.9 Whatever the merits of each of these apologias, they represented in the starkest form the profound divisions which the war had created in Catholic Europe. And as the conclave progressed, the war inevitably weighed heavily upon the minds of individual participants: the French cardinal Louis Billot learnt of the deaths of two nephews while immured in the conclave.10 Cardinal Piffl, Archbishop of Vienna, recorded the progress of the terrible battle of Lemberg between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies in his diary of the conclave which, written in strict violation of Pius X’s new rules about secrecy, provides us with a very accurate and precise description of events in the Vatican in September 1914.11
The international situation thus had a profound bearing upon the progress of the conclave. It made the election of a non-Italian Pope, not a strong possibility in any case, even less likely because eighteen out of the 31 non-Italian cardinals belonged to one or other of the two opposing sides in the war.12 Of the remainder, the three United States cardinals, the Canadian and Brazilian cardinals had only the slimmest of chances of being elected because of their lack of contacts in Rome, not to mention their inability to reach the Vatican before the conclave opened. Begin of Quebec, O’Connell of Boston and Gibbons of Baltimore just arrived in time to hear the announcement of the result (Farley of New York happened to be in Switzerland and was therefore able to reach Rome in time for the conclave). Only the five Spaniards had any serious chance of providing the first non-Italian Pope for nearly four hundred years; the last had been the Dutchman, Hadrian VI (1522–3). The fact that Italy had remained neutral in the conflagration which broke out in August 1914 obviously strengthened the chances that the centuries-old pattern would not be broken and that one of the majority Italian contingent – 34 out of a total of 65 – would be elected. Even then, those Italians who had served in the capitals of one or other of the belligerent powers, like Ferrata (Paris) and Agliardi (Munich and Vienna) were also effectively disqualified on those grounds. Not surprisingly, there are some signs of attempts by foreign governments to affect the outcome of the conclave. According to Cardinal Piffl’s diary, Cardinal Hartmann of Cologne tried to dissuade the other cardinals of the Central Powers (Germany and Austro-Hungary) from supporting Della Chiesa on the grounds that not only would his election be an insult to the memory of Pius X but that he was ‘of a violent character’ and above all was a supporter of Rampolla’s policies which, of course, had been anti-German.13 There is no evidence of French government attempts to influence the voting of the French cardinals: given the Church-State tensions in France, they would not have cut much ice any way. The Austrian foreign minister did warn the cardinals of the Habsburg Monarchy not to vote for either Della Chiesa because he was Rampollite or for Ferrata because he was pro-French, but to support instead Serafini who was a pious man who would continue the late Pope’s policies.14 On the other hand, there was no danger that the Austrian Veto’ of 1903 would be repeated in the conclave of 1914. That was ruled out by Pius X’s apostolic constitution of 1904, according to which the traditional right of veto of the Austrian, French and Spanish rulers was permanently abolished.
But it would be wrong to believe that the international situation was the sole or even major factor influencing the outcome of the 1914 conclave; the internal condition of the Church itself, and in particular the bitter, painful question of the anti-Modernist crusade hung over the deliberations of the cardinals. Thus, as well as an international divide, a deep fissure over the issue of Modernism ran through the conclave. The major defenders of the policy of the former pontificate were to be found, predictably, in the powerful phalanx of curial cardinals, Billot, De Lai, Merry Del Val, etc., while the opposition was chiefly formed by the cardinal archbishops of Italian residential sees, like Della Chiesa, Maffi and Richelmy: for obvious reasons, the resident, curial cardinals tended to have a powerful influence on any conclave. It has been claimed that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, each pontificate represented a profound reversal of its predecessor – the conciliatorist Leo XIII followed the intransigent Pius IX and the integralist Pius X followed the liberal Leo XIII.15 Would the pattern be repeated in the outcome of the 1914 conclave, or would a candidate be found to carry on the anti-Modernist crusade and Pius X’s policies towards France?
The bewilderment expressed by Cardinal Gibbons when he heard the news of the election of Della Chiesa is symptomatic of the lack of public knowledge of the cardinal from Bologna.16 It helps explain why, in most studies of the 1914 conclave, Giacomo Della Chiesa’s election has been interpreted as the result of a late or even last-minute compromise following the failure of more ‘serious’, well-known candidates to defeat one another.17 Most of the these same sources present quite conflicting accounts of the way the voting went, and get it wrong. Seldes, for example, wrote, ‘Benedict was elected on the sixteenth ballot … with the formidable vote of fifty out of the fifty-seven participants.’18 It is now clear, however, that Della Chiesa was a front-runner from the start, and moreover that he was the only candidate who consistently increased his vote in every ballot, except for a hiccough in the fifth round (see the voting table). Apart from Maffi, the only other serious candidates were Pompilj, the Vicar of Rome, who was probably regarded as a moderate integriste, and Merry Del Val who was the preferred candidate of the curial, Pius X faction. Serafini, a Benedictine, was only really taken up by the curialists as a sort of stop-gap ‘frontman’, when it became clear that neither Merry Del Val nor Pompilj could defeat Della Chiesa.19 If anyone was intended as a compromise candidate then it was Serafini and not Della Chiesa, for the latter’s candidacy was viewed as a break with the policies of the previous pontificate in respect to both Modernism and France, and a return to those of Rampolla and Leo XIII.
Indeed, the conclave was characterized from the start by attempts to head off victory for the cardinal of Bologna. As we have seen, Hartmann campaigned against him from the outset, as did the Austrian government. We know that an attempt was also made by the curial cardinal Agliardi, supporter of Archbishop Maffi of Pisa, to deny votes to Della Chiesa. He sought to convince the Austro-Hungarian cardinals that Della Chiesa was mediocris homo (‘a mediocrity’), ‘a mere bureaucrat’, whereas, he claimed, Maffi was, by contrast, a man of conspicuous intelligence and ability.20 On the last ballot, which gave Della Chiesa the requisite two-thirds majority, it was the turn of the supporters of the curial candidates, Merry Del Val and Serafini, to fight dirty: Cardinal De Lai, the curial ‘popemaker’ demanded that the Pope-elect’s ballot paper be checked to ensure that he had not voted for himself (as was laid down in the rules of the conclave). It may be that De Lai genuinely thought that Della Chiesa had voted for himself, in which case this would have invalidated his election, but it seems more likely that De Lai, in grudging acceptance of the inevitable, wished both to humiliate Della Chiesa and to fire a warning shot across the Pope-elect’s bows to demonstrate the continuing power of the Roman Curia. It could well have been humiliating for Della Chiesa – it may have brought back memories of being il piccoletto and of his marginalization after 1903. But he endured it stoically and was not, as we shall see, intimidated. As one of the scrutineers, Della Chiesa himself read all the ballot papers, checking each one of them for the Latin tag which identified who had cast it.21 When he had finished, and thus established incontrovertibly that he had not voted for himself, he returned to his seat and awaited the call to accept election. What a moral victory, what a comeback for the Leonines and Rampollites!
Voting Results of the 1914 Conclave
(N.B. There were usually four ballots per day.)
(Source: C. Zizola, Il Conclave: Storia e segreto (Roma, 1993), p. 194, based on Piffl’s diary.)
The election of Della Chiesa in 1914 can be attributed to a number of factors, but the most important of them was the fact that of all the serious candidates – Maffi, Pompilj, Merry Del Val, Serafini and himself – he had easily the best mix of the curial, diplomatic and pastoral experience required of a Pope facing the horrors of general European war, and the difficulties and uncertainties which it presented for the Church. Maffi’s career had been almost wholly pastoral, as had that of Pompilj, whereas Merry Del Val had had no pastoral experience at all, and only very limited diplomatic experience: he was almost entirely a curialist. Serafini’s career profile ran a close second to that of Della Chiesa. He had had a successful career in his order, a twelve-year stint as Bishop of Spoleto, and then a brilliant curial career: his very brief diplomatic experience as Apostolic Delegate to Mexico was his weakest point.22 Again, like the other serious candidates, Della Chiesa fitted the description of the ‘ideal’ Pope given by the Secretary of Latin Briefs in his traditional oration to the cardinals before the commencement of the voting. According to Mgr Aurelio Galli, the next Pope needed to be ‘of superior intelligence, holiness of life and Christian charity’.23 Della Chiesa, despite his exile to Bologna and his very recent and long-delayed elevation to the rank of cardinal, was eminently papabile, hence his strong showing from the start.
There were other reasons for his election. His major rival, Maffi, was seen to be too young and too ‘modern’ for many of the Italian cardinals, and too ‘Italian’ for many of the non-Italians. And whereas, like Maffi, Della Chiesa was obviously an ‘opposition’ candidate to the curial Pius X party, he was seen to be more moderate in his anti-integralism than the Cardinal of Pisa. In international affairs, he was also obviously the ‘Rampolla’ candidate, his heir in fact, but, again, he was not notably anti-Austrian: Piffl’s diary makes it clear that the five Austro-Hungarian cardinals present consistently voted for him, despite their government’s objections.24 We do not know how the French voted, but it is unlikely that they voted in a unitary fashion because Billot, a member of the Curia, was militantly anti-Modernist and was therefore likely to put this issue before any other considerations. But none of the others would have been prejudiced against Della Chiesa, given his work with Rampolla and his efforts to moderate the policies of Pius X and Merry Del Val. And though Della Chiesa was not as demonstrably pro-Italian as Maffi, there was equally no reason for the Italian government to have had any reservations about his election (see p. 23). This was important; the Italian cardinals in conclave were anxious to preserve good relations with their government which, in its turn, had gone to great lengths to apply scrupulously the Law of Guarantees at the outset of the conclave and to ensure that it was seen to be doing so.25
There is some evidence that Della Chiesa did not welcome the prospect of his election. According to Cardinal Gasparri, later his close collaborator, Della Chiesa came to his cell asking for his opinion: he wanted to read a letter declining election. Gasparri said to him: If at the beginning of the next session the split in the votes remains, but shows signs of coming to an end, I will make to Your Eminence a negative sign which will mean that Your Eminence should not read Your appeal.’26 And this is what he says he did, so he could claim in some way to have helped ‘make’ Della Chiesa Pope. But by the time he was elected Della Chiesa seems to have come to terms with his fate and his calm acceptance of office, so different from the tremulous, tearful reluctance of his predecessor, was very much in character. Traditionally, the Pope-elect is expected to show great reluctance, out of a sense of unworthiness to accept the great office, rather akin to the way in which a newly elected Speaker of the British House of Commons has to be ‘dragged’ to his or her chair. Della Chiesa’s composure can be explained quite simply by his faith. Referring to the papal office which he had now assumed, he wrote in the letter he sent to his brother immediately after his election: ‘This is a heavy burden, but the Lord will give Us the strength to carry it.’27
Della Chiesa’s choice of name came as a surprise. It was not a surprise that he did not choose the name Pius, because he was determined, for obvious reasons, to keep his distance from the previous pontificate and its policies. But many expected him to take Leo as his name, out of respect to the Pope under whom he had risen to prominence in the Church. Instead he chose Benedict, and he later claimed that he was influenced by the example of the founder of the great monastic order and his search for peace.28 To some extent his choice of name must also have been influenced by the fact that the last Archbishop of Bologna to become Pope used that name, Benedict XIV (1740–58): two other Bolognesi had been elected Pope, Innocent IX (1591) and Gregory XV (1321–3). Benedict XIV was a good example to follow, having been a wise diplomatist and a beneficent and enlightened Pope in an age of enlightenment: even secular, Protestant writers of the period are to be found among his admirers.29 Two recent authors, Carlo Falconi and Giorgio Rumi, have made the rather fanciful suggestion that Benedict was influenced in his choice of name by that of the reforming Pope in Fogazzaro’s Santo, a Modernist tract if ever there was one.30 Given Benedict’s positively notorious prudence, it seems highly unlikely.
However calm and collected his behaviour in the Sistine Chapel as the conclave came to end, he must have experienced very powerful emotions as the cardinals came forward, one by one, to make their submission to him. This was his moment of triumph. What must he have been thinking as De Lai performed the obesiance or, even more poignantly, as Merry Del Val got down on his knees before him to kiss his toe? Peters quotes a passage from Dalla Torre who claimed that Benedict was ‘incapable of rancour, forgetful of every offence’, to suggest that there was no bad blood between them.31 This a very strained explanation: why employ it here, unless Peters did believe that Merry Del Val had offended Della Chiesa? According to another contemporary source, Francis MacNutt, Merry Del Val could not conceal his dismay at Della Chiesa’s election: ‘One of the Cardinals whose seat in the Sixtine [sic] Chapel was next to Merry Del Val’s, was reported to have said … that when the election of the Cardinal of Bologna was announced, his neighbour said to him, sotto voce: “Ma! Questa è una calamità”(“Oh, this is a calamity”!). To this he replied: “Per Vostra Eminenza, evidentemente lo è” ! (“For Your Eminence, it clearly is!”).’32
The accounts of the scenes that followed the declaration demonstrate how Benedict never allowed the grandeur, pomp and solemnity of occasions to obscure his humanity. When the three papal garments, in small, medium and large, were presented to him in the sacristy, and even the smallest proved too large, he turned to the wretched Vatican tailor and said smilingly: ‘My dear, had you forgotten me?’33 And as the bells of Rome announced his election and he set off to give his blessing to the crowds inside St Peter’s from the internal loggia of the Hall of Benedictions above the great entrance, he allegedly began quietly to weep.34 His humanity was revealed even more sharply when he declined a grand coronation in St Peter’s and insisted instead on a somewhat reduced ceremony inside the Sistine Chapel – out of respect for the war and the terrible sufferings it was bringing to the peoples of Europe. There was a precedent for this in the coronation of Leo XIII in 1878, which had been prompted by the extremely precarious situation of the Holy See after the capture of Rome in 1870, and was clearly also intended as a kind of protest against it. But even this gesture on Benedict’s part, like so many others of his during the course of the conflict, was misunderstood and he had to get a leading Catholic journalist, the Marchese Crispolti, to write an explanatory newspaper article in order to remove misapprehensions.35 Despite the claim that the coronation was ‘hasty and almost unceremonious’36 all the rituals connected with it were carried out – including the burning of flax three times and calling out to the Pope, ‘Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world!’ As Peters says: ‘For his short reign and the inexplicable oblivion into which he fell the symbol was cruelly apt.’37
The end of a conclave is necessarily attended by some confusion, even chaos.38 In his typically matter-of-fact, businesslike way, Benedict took command of the Vatican and very quickly restored order: he had, after all, lived and worked there for twenty years. As Vercesi says, some of his first acts demonstrated that the Vatican was under new management.39 He took the opportunity to put out a hand of friendship to France. Writing to the European heads of State announcing his election, he did not fail to include President Poincaré among them.
His personnel changes also signified a ‘new course’ in papal policy. Merry Del Val tendered his resignation as Secretary of State and, like his predecessor, Rampolla, in 1903, was despatched to head the rather insignificant Sacred Congregation for the Fabric of St Peter’s. Again, like Rampolla, he was later appointed Secretary of the Holy Office. He was given 48 hours to leave his rooms in the Borgia apartment and consigned to the apartment in the Palazzina of the Archpriest of St Peter’s which Rampolla had occupied in his declining years. According to Falconi, the new Pope tried to remove Merry Del Val even further from Rome by offering him the Abbacy of Subiaco.40 Out with Merry Del Val went his protégé and friend, Mgr (later Cardinal) Nicola Canali, who was removed from his post as Sostituto and demoted to the rather less important one of Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Ceremonies. Merry Del Val, Canali, along with two papal chamberlains, Mgrs Caccia-Dominioni and Arborio Mella di Sant’Elia, and Mgr Misciateli, the Prefect of the Apostolic Palaces, the ecclesiastical head of the papal household, were to constitute a sort of unofficial ‘opposition’, the Vaticanetto as it was called, during Benedict’s pontificate. Cardinal Gasparri, his deputy Mgr Tedeschini, and the more intimate members of the Pope’s household, Mgr Giuseppe Migone and Mariano Faggiani, were all concerned about the influence of this clique, and more especially the presence of some of them in Benedict’s own entourage, feeling that the Pope was too indulgent towards them, but as his close friend Carlo Monti argued, ‘Benedict XV was not the kind of man who would permit anyone seriously to oppose his policies.’41
Out from the Secretariat of State also went Benigni, who was sent to be Professor of Diplomatic Style at the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, clearly a demotion because this was the very post Della Chiesa had occupied at the beginning of his career in the Vatican. This was the first major blow struck against the anti-Modernist fanatics. The second was Benedict’s first encyclical Ad Beatissimi which, while containing a very clear reiteration of Pius X’s condemnation of Modernism (‘That condemnation, venerable brethren, We now renew to the full’), called for ‘concord’ among Catholics and an end to disputes. Most significantly, Benedict laid down instructions on an issue very close to his own, unpleasant experiences in the previous pontificate: ‘In matters about which the Holy See has not given a decision, and in which, without injury to the faith and ecclesiastical discipline, there may be differences of opinion, each may lawfully defend his own. In such disputes there must be no offensive language, for this may lead to grave breaches of charity.’42 Benedict went on to demand that: ‘If others do not accept a writer’s view, he must not cast suspicion on their faith or spirit of discipline’, and expressed his ‘desire that the practice lately come into use, of using distinctive names by which Catholics are marked off from Catholics should cease’.43 As Peters says, ‘The whole section just quoted refers, of course, to the integralists or “integral Catholics”. Benedict does not call them by name, but his reference to an adjective which was recently applied to the word Catholic is unequivocal.’44 But however clear the change of policy from that of the previous pontificate, the integristes were not beaten yet. Though Ad Beatissimi, and the wartime conditions, put an end to the most public of the anti-Modernist excesses, unknown to Benedict, Benigni’s spy service, La Sapinière, continued to flourish until it was closed down in 1919, following the publication of documents from its archives which had been found by the Germans.45
Animated, no doubt, by the same spirit of concord expressed in Ad Beatissimi, Benedict made few other curial changes: Cardinals De Lai and Billot retained their positions and Agliardi was, if anything, promoted, being made Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church, having previously held no major curial post. To call these changes a ‘purge’ would, therefore, be an exaggeration, but they were a demonstration of the fact that Benedict was now firmly in charge. Nor did Benedict behave like his successor, the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Achille Ratti, who when elected Pope in 1922 brought a host of his fellow Milanese with him.46 From Bologna, Benedict brought only Mariano Faggiani, his valet, and other servants, Giuseppe Migone, his chaplain, and P. Beccari, agente della Mensa, that is treasurer of the diocese, whom he appointed Master of the Sacred Palaces, and who after 1929 became Secretary General to the Government of the State of the Vatican City.47
The appointment of Cardinal Ferrata as Merry Del Val’s successor in the Secretariat of State was another very clear signal of a change of policy: Ferrata was pro-French and had been a close collaborator of Leo XIII and Rampolla and it would be his major task to win back French sympathy.48 But Ferrata died within a month, at which point Benedict turned to another francophile, his old friend and colleague Pietro Gasparri, to take over the Vatican’s top job. Ferrata was regarded as having a very powerful, forceful personality. It is difficult, therefore, to imagine how he would have operated with Benedict XV, and also what his attitude to the war would have been. The choice of Gasparri turned out to be a brilliant one49 and Gasparri was to go on to serve Benedict’s successor Pius XI for another seven years, in which time he was to be chiefly instrumental on the Vatican side for negotiating the Lateran Pacts of 1929 which brought to an end the ‘Roman Question’.50 Gasparri and Benedict nicely complemented each other, though there is no doubt that in matters of policy it was the Pope who had the last word. Sir Alec Randall, a British minister to the Holy See, has left a shrewd pen portrait of Benedict’s most important collaborator:
Gasparri came of farmer stock, and was sometimes nicknamed ‘Il Contadino’. His dress, in the years when I saw him, showed an unusual indifference to neatness … (it) would cause a certain mild surprise or amusement, until you experienced the vigour of his personality. He had humour, geniality and diplomatic adaptability: his scholarship, though in this he was said to be deeply indebted to assistants, was associated with a solid and enduring work, the New Code of Canon Law. Simple though his life was, austere was not the first adjective one would associate with him. Though of marked piety, he could obviously relax, enjoy a joke and also make one.51
To complete his team in the Secretariat of State, Benedict brought in Mgr Federico Tedeschini as Sostituto and retained Mgr Eugenio Pacelli (later Pius XII) as Under-Secretary of State for Extraordinary Affairs, aided by Mgr Bonaventura Cerretti: both were to render Benedict and the Holy See sterling service during his pontificate. But one of the most important ‘appointments’ which Benedict made in the area of Vatican foreign relations was that of his old friend, Baron Carlo Monti, as his unofficial ‘go-between’ with the Italian government, when it requested one at the beginning of his reign.52 Monti was especially well-placed to perform this role, being director-general of the office for the Affari di Culto in the Ministry of Justice (later Ministry of the Interior). Affari di Culto dealt with virtually all matters touching upon the Church’s relationship with the Italian State especially, as we have seen, Church property and finance under State control and the preventive approval of episcopal nominations. In a letter of 28 February 1915 Benedict wrote, ‘Baron Carlo Monti has access to Us at all times’, and he later described him as his ‘minister plenipotentiary’ and ‘vice-pope’, such were the important and delicate matters which he had to negotiate with the Italian government on Benedict’s behalf.53 For their part, Italian government ministers saw him as their ‘chargé d’affaires’ in the Vatican. In often very difficult circumstances, even sometimes with less than the full backing of either side, Monti was to perform a vitally important service to both Italy and Benedict during the latter’s reign.
Benedict, as we have seen, had an ‘image problem’, to use the jargon of the modern public relations industry. By the time of his coronation, his power to impress had clearly not improved. An American journalist wrote of him thus: ‘With his unimpressive figure and his expressionless face there is neither spiritual or temporal majesty.’54 Benedict XV emphatically did not possess the charisma of either of his predecessors, Pius X or Leo XIII, both of whom were, in their different ways, physically handsome. He was further hampered in his role as Sovereign Pontiff by the fact that, as a result of the war’s effect on communications, and especially on those across the Atlantic, there were far fewer pilgrimages to Rome during his reign than had previously been the case. Pius X, Leo XIII and even Pius IX had all been beneficiaries of the increasing tendency of Catholics to visit the Eternal City, and thus the ‘prisoner of the Vatican’ had come to be better known to his followers throughout the world. The pilgrimages had also very effectively challenged the ‘secularization’ of Rome by the new Italian authorities. The Rome correspondent of The Tablet described the effects which the First World War, and especially Italy’s entry into it in May 1915, had upon the Vatican:
the devout crowds of pilgrims entering by the Bronze Gates, the long stream of sightseers on their way to the galleries and museums, the carriages of foreign prelates who drove every morning to be received in audience by the Holy Father, the swarms of itinerant vendors that hung about the colonnade – they have all disappeared.55
On the other hand, the war prompted many more people than usual to write to the Pope, either seeking personal favours – especially the release of POWs which they believed he was capable of achieving – or asking for papal approval, blessing or a public stand on a matter connected to the war (see pp. 113—14). But the physical isolation of the Pope and the lack of personal contact with his flock would hamper the development of his moral authority during the war years.
At least one contemporary observer, J. D. Gregory, the secretary to the British Legation from December 1914 until June 1915, was extremely critical of Benedict’s style of rule:
the present pope is a decided mediocrity. He has the mentality of a parochial Italian who has hardly travelled at all and a tortuous method of conducting affairs … He is capable of rising neither to great heights nor of efficiently controlling the ordinary routine of his administration … he is obstinate and bad-tempered to a degree.56
As numerous entries in Monti’s diary show, Benedict could indeed be both obstinate and bad-tempered. The accusation of mediocrity was not new and is even understandable at this point in his career, the claim about his lack of foreign experience is fair, though given his role at the centre of affairs in the Secretariat of State, that does not mean that he was lacking in a knowledge and understanding of world affairs. But the suggestion that he was a less than able manager of men is unsustainable in view of his long experience in the Vatican, and the reputation he acquired there, and the clear evidence that in Bologna he ran a very tight ship. It should also be said that when Gregory wrote his memoirs at the end of the 1920s, his view of Benedict XV had mellowed.57 Gregory’s superior, the British Minister, was also critical of Benedict, claiming that he was a bad judge of men and citing the cases of Mgr Sanz de Samper, the Master of the Chamber, whom he alleged was totally incompetent, and Mgr Gerlach, who was charged with spying for the Germans in 1917 (see pp. 103—7).58 Benedict’s appointment of his friend, Mgr Valfré di Bonzo, to the Vienna nunciature did not turn out to be a complete success either; Valfré di Bonzo was unable or unwilling to conceal his ardent Italian patriotism and his indiscretions eventually isolated him from influential circles in Vienna.59 On the other hand, the choice of Gasparri, Tedeschini, Pacelli, Cerretti, and Ratti (later Pius XI) to work in close collaboration with him, as well as the appointment of Enrico Rosa as editor of the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica and later Giuseppe Dalla Torre as editor of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s own newspaper, suggest that the Pope’s capacity to pick able men far outweighed the occasional mistake he made.
Like Paul VI at his election in 1963, Benedict already possessed an unparalleled knowledge of the workings of the apparatus of papal government – the Roman Curia – which a seven-year absence from Rome had not impaired. Like Paul, he had served long enough in the system to understand all its peculiar and convoluted ways of operating: in this respect, he had been well-trained by both Rampolla and Leo XIII. But whereas Paul VI carried out a wholesale reform of the Roman Curia in the 1960s,60 Benedict changed very little. His predecessor, Pius X, had carried out a much more drastic reform of the structures of papal government. This he had been obliged to do because neither of his predecessors, Leo XIII or Pius IX, had been willing to grasp the nettle of curial reform during their long reigns and abolish those offices rendered unnecessary by the final abolition of papal territorial sovereignty in 1870, eradicate duplication between the congregations of the Roman Curia or the scandal of unemployed priests who gravitated towards Rome.61 Benedict’s reforms were few and seemingly marginal by comparison: the creation of the Congregation of Studies in November 1915, the merging of the congregations of the Index with the Holy Office in 1917, the hiving off of the Oriental Churches from Propaganda in 1918, the creation of a Pontifical Heraldic Commission in 1916 and minor changes to the organization of the Congregation of the Clergy in 1919.
This relative inactivity on Benedict’s part could be explained by his innate conservatism, the shortness of his reign and, above all, by the fact that he had to direct his major energies and attention to the war and the diplomatic effort to bring it to an end. Thus his primary concern would have been the efficient working of the various branches of the Secretariat of State, the department with which he was most familiar and the one whose machinery was most important to him in the pursuit of his peace diplomacy. But not all of his changes in the Roman Curia were as marginal as they might seem at first sight. The creation of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches was certainly not: it was, indeed, central to his whole strategy in Eastern Europe and the Near East as will become clear (see Chapter 8). The detachment of control of the seminaries from the Congregation of the Consistory was clearly intended as a measure to clip the wings of its prefect, Cardinal De Lai, and curb his anti-Modernist excesses in the field of priestly education of which Benedict himself had been a victim as Archbishop of Bologna.62 The changes which Benedict made at the Congregation of the Clergy were prompted by a serious problem which the Vatican faced during Benedict’s pontificate, lack of money. According to Corrado Pallenberg: ‘The important and technical character of the business dealt with by the Congregation required a specialized staff. In 1919, Benedict XV attached to the finance office a school attended by young priests who took a three-year course.’63
In fact, the financial problems which Benedict faced had their origin in an epoch long before he came to the papal throne or had otherwise arisen from circumstances beyond his control. The Holy See had consistently refused as a matter of principle to take any part of the annual indemnity laid down in the Law of Papal Guarantees of 1871 for the financial losses which it had suffered as a result of the incorporation of the Papal States into United Italy. Having rejected the Law of Guarantees as an unsatisfactory and unilateral solution of the ‘Roman Question’, the Vatican could hardly take the money which the Law offered. The institution of the collections of ‘Peter’s Pence’ (the Obolo di San Pietro) in Catholic communities throughout the world did, however, offset the Vatican’s difficulties in the short term. And Pius X (1903—14), in his typically shrewd, peasant fashion, had managed to leave a three million lire reserve at his death in 1914.64
The income from Peter’s Pence inevitably fell very sharply during the First World War. According to Cardinal Gasparri, in 1915, ‘of the belligerents, only Germany continues to contibute Peter’s Pence’.65 The drastic fall in the number of pilgrimages referred to above was one major cause, for frequently those same pilgrims had been the bearers of Peter’s Pence. Another problem was that in 1917 the Vatican was forced to commit a considerable part of its earnings from accounts in the Banca di Roma to bailing out both Catholic banks and the Italian Catholic press.66 It was true, however, that Benedict was prodigally generous in his charity, giving his all to help victims of war, famine and other disasters (see p. 113). Indeed, it has been estimated that he spent some eighty-two million lire in his humanitarian efforts, an enormous sum by the standards of the time.67 But Seldes talks about the ‘management or rather lack of financial management under Benedict XV’.68 Nino Lo Bello is even more categorical in his criticism of Benedict XV: he says, ‘the Vatican was bankrupt on Benedict’s death, and the Secretary of State, Cardinal Gasparri, was forced to obtain a loan from Rothschilds’ in order to cover the costs of the 1922 conclave, the one which elected Pius XI.69 In 1919 Gasparri provided a breakdown of Vatican finances to Italian Prime Minister Francesco Nitti in an attempt, successfully as it turned out, to dissuade the Italian Government from taxing the Vatican’s income. The breakdown obviously does not paint a very glowing picture of the Vatican finances at that time, but it does suggest that the Holy See was keeping its head above water at that stage in Benedict’s pontificate.70
Despite wartime financial stringency, within the walls of the Vatican, and in particular within the restricted circle of his court, Benedict XV maintained the traditional style and pomp of the Papacy, reviving traditional ceremonies like the ‘Mandatum’, the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday. The advent of the new Pope was a return to the Leonine pontificate in more than just policy. Benedict was a stickler for protocol and etiquette and a more remote figure than his predecessor, and Peters makes the point that: ‘There is no denying the fact that with the accession of Benedict XV something romantically simple and homespun had left the Vatican.’71 But the domain within which he exercised his solemn sovereignty was very small indeed. As Cardinal Gasparri explained, in 1917, ‘The Vatican, even with its gardens, is merely a palace, not a state.’72 In fact, it was also somewhat smaller in area than it became after the signing of the Lateran Pacts in 1929. F. Zanetti, writing at the time of the signing of the Lateran Pacts, said that the new Vatican State ‘would comprise the present Vatican, plus the land enclosed by the internal confines of the Vatican gardens and the walls of Rome which girdle the Vatican hill …’73 Indeed, prior to 1929, much of the eventual State of the Vatican City was not included in the area deemed to be ‘extraterritorial’ by the Law of Guarantees of 1871. Right below the walls of many of the apartments near the Sistine Chapel were Italian soldiers guarding their State Mint, so that in order to achieve private access to the Vatican gardens by wheeled transport, it became necessary to construct a tunnel beneath the Apostolic Palace. Thus, while on the one hand Benedict’s little ‘kingdom’ was small and claustrophobic, it was also lacking in privacy as crowds had access to the Basilica, the museums, the gardens and even parts of the Palace as well. Benedict added little in the way of buildings or beautification to his domain, though he did build the Petrine Museum and the Vatican Observatory, and the odd church in the city of Rome,74 largely because of financial constraints and the war: thus there are very few examples of his heraldry to be found in the Vatican.
Even though ‘the palace and garden’ were on the edge of the city of Rome, and connected to it by what can only be described as meandering backstreets – the grandiose Via della Conciliazione approach was not to be constructed until the 1930s and 1940s – they were easily accessible from the Borgo neighbourhood. Indeed, the relationship between the Vatican and the Borgo aptly symbolized the relationship between the Holy See and Italy in this period. The police commissariat of the Borgo was responsible for supervising public order around the Vatican – the various papal forces, including the Gendarmerie, performed those functions inside – but also had the task of effectively spying on the Pope, his court and the Roman Curia.75 As David Alvarez has demonstrated, during the First World War the Vatican possessed virtually no communications security: police informers inside Peter’s City carried away secret papers; the security of Vatican mails and even its diplomatic bags was constantly violated by both Italian intelligence and the War Censorship Office, and the Italian High Command broke nearly all Vatican codes and intercepted all of its telegraph traffic.76 The Vatican was at the mercy of the Italians for all provisions and supplies, including gas, water and electricity. Perhaps the only really valuable asset it possessed was its allegedly excellent information gathering system, through the world-wide network of dioceses and religious orders. In August 1918, the Japanese diplomat, Prince Ito, while visiting the Italian foreign ministry, insisted on an audience in the Vatican on the grounds that it was a world ‘observatory’, with the most reliable sources of information.77
It was under these difficult conditions that the Pope carried on his work, following a routine that had been established back in Bologna, and probably earlier than that – like many modern popes he seems to have needed very little sleep. Whereas at Bologna he had lived in a sort of priestly community, in Rome his only real company were his former chaplain Migone, the Lombard Monsignori Arborio Di Mella and Caccia-Dominioni, and the German priest, Mgr Rudolf Gerlach (for whom he seems to have had a special affection), whom he appointed as papal private chamberlains (effectively private secretaries) immediately after his election. Popes can hardly be said to enjoy a ‘private’ life, but if such existed for Benedict then it was the few precious moments that he spent eating with the children of his valet, Mariano Faggiani,78 or the little time he spent with his family.
Unlike his predecessor, Pius X, who passed a few hours talking, drinking a little wine and saying the Rosary each week with his unmarried sisters, whom he had brought to live in Rome, Benedict did not initially see his family on a regular basis. Yet they remained close. On the evening of his election, he wrote to his brother Giovanni Antonio: ‘Dearest Brother, I address to you all the first letter I have written after my election as Supreme Pontiff.’79 According to the present members of the Della Chiesa family, Benedict’s brother and sister went immediately to Rome when they heard news of his election.80 Shortly afterwards, Giovanni Antonio, his wife Eugenia and his son Giuseppe (Pino) moved there permanently. But in 1918 Eugenia died. Benedict’s letter to his brother on this occasion was typical both of his piety and his brotherly affection:
Faith teaches you that in Heaven your beloved Eugenia can work on your behalf, and in a more effective way than that she was able to do down here on earth. Only yesterday the poor invalid received the Viaticum: we can therefore hope that now she sees unveiled the God whom yesterday she was only able to see under the veils of the Eucharist; and if human defects and frailty have kept her in the prison of expiation, all of us will multiply our efforts to hasten for her the beatific vision.81
Giovanni Antonio’s trials were not over yet, for within twenty-four hours of his wife’s death he suffered another blow – a cerebral haemorrhage which left him partially paralysed. This prompted Benedict to institute more frequent and regular meetings with his family; three times a week he accompanied his brother’s wheelchair around the Vatican gardens. Despite his notorious lack of enthusiasm for the open air,82 these outings gave him obvious pleasure. In February 1919 he wrote to his brother:
My Dearest Giovanni,
I am looking forward so much to seeing you! They tell me that you are better and I am delighted and hope that you can come to see me in the Vatican Gardens soon. What a pleasure, what a pleasure it will be for me. Until then …83
As Giovanni Antonio’s health declined, he came to rely increasingly upon his son to look after him, and Benedict’s concern did not abate. In September 1920 he wrote to Pino expressing his doubts about the proposal to take Giovanni Antonio to Poggio Mirteto (now one of the family estates). In particular, he was not convinced that there would be sufficient night nursing and he concluded his letter, ‘I fear that he will be even more bored (at Poggio Mirteto) than at Nettuno’.84 Two months later, on 10 December, Giovanni Antonio died.
Though his sister did not live in Rome, Benedict nevertheless kept in regular contact with her. Giulia, always his favourite sibling, had married Count Persiceto and lived on an estate in the Veneto region of north-eastern Italy. Her letters were an interesting alternative source of information on the area in which she lived, especially after the catastrophic Italian defeat at Caporetto in 1917 which brought the front line to within eight kilometres of her home, and in 1919 Benedict appointed her as president of the association dedicated to the rebuilding of churches in the region.85 Benedict never lost interest in his family. In December 1919, Giulia’s son, Carlo Persiceto, came to work in Rome. Benedict wrote to Pino: ‘You will have heard the news that Carlo Persiceto has obtained a post as technical inspector with the Bank of Rome, based in Rome: now the big problem will be that of finding a house.’86 But when the war began to affect his family, Benedict’s sense of duty, and no doubt his concern to avoid bad publicity, triumphed over family loyalty. According to G. Felice, ‘when his sister-in-law in her maternal egoism asked him to save her son (Pino) from conscription, he replied firmly “no”, calling upon the young heir to the family name to sacrifice himself for the honour of his country, which he did in fact do’.87 The letter is a reference to Giuseppe, and his mother presumably hoped that Benedict could find him an ‘exempt’ employment in the Vatican. Perhaps the ‘maternal egoism’ of which Felice speaks was one of the human weaknesses to which Benedict referred in his letter to Giovanni Antonio after her death. Later on in the war, unknown to Benedict, Carlo Monti sought several times to have Pino withdrawn from the front line.88
Benedict’s other brother, ‘Baccicino’, was to be a cause of much anxiety and anguish in the first months of his pontificate. Baccicino did not marry and a letter from Benedict to Giovanni Antonio suggests that Baccicino was the ‘black sheep’ of the Della Chiesa family, inasmuch as it refers to Baccicino’s ‘morally and financially disordered life’.89 Baccicino ceased to be a worry to his brother when, after a short illness, he died on 4 April 1915.90
It is said that John Paul II resents what he describes as the ‘gilded cage’ which he finds himself in at the Vatican.91 His frustration is especially understandable bearing in mind his athletic lifestyle, but he can and does travel outside of the Vatican: he is the most travelled of all popes. Benedict XV, though of more sedentary habits, also found the Vatican to be a ‘gilded cage’. Much more so, in fact, than John Paul II. Benedict, like his three predecessors, was still very much the ‘prisoner of the Vatican’. He was unable to leave it for political reasons; he was not even able to visit his cathedral, the Basilica of St John Lateran, or for that matter any other part of his diocese, the city of Rome, which was of course the very source of his spiritual authority. Judging by the very limited contact which he had with his family, Benedict seems to have accepted his ‘imprisonment’ as a sort of penance for himself, viewing it as a sacrifice in the cause of the Church, and in his quest for peace. The Vatican, then, became not so much a cage as a cell wherein he could, as much as possible, live the life of one of the monks of his namesake Benedict, even though he was himself of the secular and not religious clergy. According to Carlo Monti, who visited him regularly and saw his private apartment: ‘Benedict XV desired that the Papacy revert to its traditional outward dignity, and rightly so; but his private life is of a modest, positively monastic, simplicity.’92 In these circumstances, Benedict lived out his life as priest, bureaucrat, diplomat and Pope for seven years and five months.
1. Gregory, p. 88; Falconi, p. 52.
2. See Falconi, p. 86; Duffy, p. 250, says that the concordat which Merry Del Val signed with Serbia in June 1914 helped increase the tension in the Balkans but does not explain why.
3. Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Segreteria di Stato (henceforth ASV, SS), Guerra, 1914–1918, Rubricella 244, Fasc. 29, Tanto per la verità’ (no date).
4. Gregory, p. 88, claims that at least two attempts were made by the Vatican in the summer of 1914 to stop the war – without, however, providing any evidence to support his claims.
5. Kent and Pollard, pp. 16–17.
6. Monticone, p. 155.
7. Vercesi, p. 65.
8. Liebman, p. 37.
9. Ibid.
10. Zizola, p. 196.
11. Liebman, p. 41.
12. See AP, 1914, pp. 1–15.
13. Liebman, p. 45.
14. Zizola, p. 196.
15. Ibid., p. 192.
16. Moynihan, p. 329.
17. Schmidlin, III, p. 189, notes 15–23; Seldes, pp. 111–12; Sforza, pp. 163–4, ‘The candidacy of della Chiesa did not appear until the fifteenth ballot, on the initiative of Cardinal Gasparri who had been his associate in the Secretary of State’s office.’
18. According to Seldes, p. Ill, Benedict was elected on the sixteenth ballot. His figures are then more or less as described in Piffl’s diary, except that he says Benedict was ‘elected with the formidable vote of fifty out of the fifty-seven participants’. See also Vistalli, pp. 25–6.
19. Zizola, p. 195.
20. Liebman, p. 45, who also quotes the words of Cardinal Csernoch, Primate of Hungary and Archbishop of Eszertgom to Piffl: ‘Serafini is the candidate of De Lai and all the curial cardinals who do not want to lose their positions. The fact that De Lai is manoeuvring on his behalf is extremely significant. De Lai wants a puppet whom he can control at his pleasure.’
21. According to Sforza, p. 164, ‘Not until the third turn did he obtain exactly two-thirds of the votes required for his election. It was evening. The adversaries of the Archbishop of Bologna contested the election, asserting that it would not be regular unless it were proved that della Chiesa had not voted for himself … As it was late they decided that all the cardinals that had voted for della Chiesa should repeat their votes for him the next morning, if they wished, in the first ballot … When Della Chiesa, who had listened impassively to the discussion, retired to his cell he knew that he was already pope, since he had not voted for himself.’ It is a lovely story, and Peters, pp. 77–8, repeats it, but it is not true. As can be seen from the voting table on page 63, Della Chiesa’s vote reached the necessary two-thirds on the second ballot of 3 September and the verification took place in the afternoon of the same day.
22. Falconi, p. 94.
23. As quoted in Peters, pp. 76–7.
24. Liebman, p. 45.
25. Garzia, p. 10.
26. As quoted in Gasparri, pp. 156–7.
27. AFDC, Lettere al Suo Fratello Giovanni Antonio, 3 September 1914.
28. Peters, p. 80.
29. For a brief account of the reign of Benedict XIV, see Walsh, pp. 178–82.
30. Rumi (1991), p. 4; see also Falconi, p. 114.
31. As quoted in Peters, p. 82.
32. MacNutt, p. 313. (It is interesting to note that this is one of the few passages in MacNutt relating to Della Chiesa which Peters does not quote.)
33. As quoted in Schmidlin, III, p. 198. n. 3.
34. Peters, p. 84.
35. F. Cnspolti (1939), p. 19.
36. PRO, FO, 371/3086, Count de Salis to Curzon, 25 October 1922.
37. Peters, p. 88.
38. Vercesi, p. 65.
39. For a description of the scenes at the conclave of 1958, see Hebblethwaite (1984), pp. 287–8.
40. Falconi, pp. 108–9, where he cites passages from Mgr Canali’s deposition for the beatification of Merry Del Val.
41. Diario, I, p. 450, 9 September 1916 and II, pp. 3–4, 3 January 1917.
42. Carlen (ed.), IV, p. 144.
43. Ibid.
44. Peters, p. 108.
45. Falconi, p. 132.
46. Among the Milanese whom Pius XI brought in were his brother Count Alberto Ratti, who was high in the councils of the Vatican; Giuseppe Colombo, whom he made national head of Catholic Action; Bernardino Nogara, who was responsible for the Vatican’s financial success after 1929; Beltrami, the architect, and Giulio Castelli, the constructor, who were responsible for much building work in and around Vatican City in the early 1930s.
47. Felice, p. 166.
48. Pizzuti, p. 126.
49. According to Dalla Torre, p. 409, There are those who hold that Gasparri was a diplomat of the genius of Consalvi, and others who defined him as “the Giolitti of the Church”.’
50. Pollard (1985), ch. 2.
51. Randall, p. 61.
52. For an account of the circumstances in which Monti came to be chosen see his Diario, I, pp. 171–5.
53. Quoted in Felice, p. 169; Diario, I, p. 349, 17 February 1916 and II, p. 247, 12 January 1918.
54. O’Hare-McCormick, pp. 14–15.
55. The Tablet, 13 January 1917, p. 49
56. Quoted in Hachey (ed.), p. xx.
57. Gregory, pp. 88–9
58. PRO, FO, 371/3086, Count de Salis to Lord Curzon, 25 October 1922.
59. Diario, II, p. 31, 10 January 1917 and p. 38, 22 January 1918.
60. Hebblethwaite (1993), pp. 344–6.
61. Falconi, p. 25 and pp. 27–8.
62. Bedeschi (1968), p. 139.
63. Pallenberg, p. 98.
64. Lo Bello, p. 63.
65. Diario, I, p. 301, 8 December 1915.
66. AAES, Italia, Fasc. 335, memo of Benedict XV of 2 December 1917 and Diario, II, p. 80, 3 May 1917.
67. Jankowiak, p. 221: Generous in his charity to others, Benedict was extremely thrifty in his personal habits. As his handwritten memoranda in the Vatican Archives show, as late as 1921 he was still using the headed notepaper he had had printed for himself when he became cardinal in May 1914.
68. Seldes, p. 246.
69. Lo Bello, p. 61.
70. Gasparri, pp. 376–8; see also Diario, II, p. 3, 3 January 1917, where Monti says that Benedict told him that the Vatican was more or less balancing its books at that time.
71. Peters, pp. 95–6.
72. As quoted in Gasparri, p. 234.
73. Zanetti, p. 306.
74. Jankowiak, p. 224; I am grateful to Ron Scarfe for bringing to my attention the colourful story in the National Geographical Magazine, March 1939, vol. LXXV, no. 3, p. 382, that ‘Benedict XV kept two wolves in the Vatican Gardens’. We have not been able to find corroboration of this story: the Della Chiesa family emphatically deny it.
75. Garzia, p. 72; the reports of the Commissario of the Borgo are to be found in ACS, MI, DGPS, 1914–1918, p. 665.
76. Alvarez (1992), pp. 447–54.
77. Diario, II, p. 367, 17 August 1918.
78. Zanetti, p. 239.
79. AFDC, Lettere al Suo Fratello Giovanni Antonio, 3 September 1914.
80. Interview with the Marchese Benedetto Della Chiesa, Rome, October, 1996.
81. AFDC, Lettere al Suo Fratello Giovanni Antonio, 9 December 1918.
82. Diario, II, p. 22, 30 January 1917.
83. AFDC, ibid., 6 February 1919.
84. Ibid., letter to Pino, 2 October 1919.
85. LaCC, 70, 1 (1919), p. 248.
86. AFDC, letter to Pino, 4 September 1920.
87. Felice, p. 167.
88. Diario, I, p. 308, 17 December 1915, p. 322, 7 January 1916 and II, p. 197, 4 November 1917 and p. 213, 23 November 1917.
89. AFDC, Lettere al Suo Fratello Giovanni Antonio, 13 April 1915.
90. Zanetti, p. 234 claims that Baccicino was involved in a Spanish banking scandal. There is no corroborating evidence for this. Zanetti almost certainly confused Baccicino with his brother Giovanni Antonio. According to the Diario, II, 166, p. 291, the latter was asked to lend his name to a banking venture in Spain, but was persuaded by Benedict to abandon the idea for fear of scandal.
91. Bernstein and Politi, p. 369.
92. Diario, I, p. 296, 1 December 1915.